Telos, the Warden is a creation of the Elder Gods born from the Anima Mundi who guards the Heart of Gielinor. He is billed as the toughest solo boss monster in RuneScape. His chamber is accessible through a large "tree" like structure in the middle of the dungeon.

To fight Telos, players first must obtain an ancient sigil. The four components of the sigil can be obtained by killing all the generals in the Heart at least once; therefore, there is a minimum of 80 Attack, Prayer, Magic and Ranged required to reach Telos. The components are always a guaranteed drop, but only appear to the player who dealt the most damage to the boss. Once used on the door in the middle of the dungeon, it will be consumed and give the player permanent access to the boss chamber.

Killing Telos is a possible Soul Reaper assignment. The assigned number of kills can vary between 2 and 8.

Telos is one of the bosses required to unlock the title [Name] the Reaper, which is a requirement for the completionist cape. Defeating Telos at a minimum of 100% enrage or greater is a requirement for the trimmed completionist cape. Upon killing Telos at 500% or more enrage, players unlock [Name] the Warden title. A silver and gold version of the title can be unlocked by killing Telos at 2,000% and 4,000% enrage, respectively.

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While fighting Telos at under 100% enrage, the player will progress through four phases, each of which - upon successful completion of the phase - involve Telos and the player gradually descending down platforms into the Heart of Gielinor. If Telos is encountered at an enrage level of 100% or greater, the fight is extended to five phases, the last of which involves mechanics abstracted from all four phases preceding it.

Telos's difficulty is scalable: players are able to choose the fight's difficulty which affects both the difficulty of the boss and the value of rewards received from killing the boss.[1] To do so, the player must successfully defeat Telos at an enrage level greater than 0% (see below). Then, when initiating a confrontation with Telos, the player will receive an interface in which they may select a custom enrage level (between 0% and the highest enrage level on which they successfully scored a kill plus 5%). Players can obtain all of Telos's unique drops at any enrage (see drops section below)[2]. As he gains enrage, his combat level, life points, and damage inflicted increase. The life points cap at 600,000 points at 200% enrage for the first four phases. Phase 5 caps at 200,000 life points at 300%, which gives Telos a maximum of 800,000 life points. Some of Telos' mechanics also cap at specific enrages; for example, the three anima fonts cap at 10,000 life points at 500% enrage, and breaking free of his tendril attack caps at 30,000 damage at 2700% enrage.

A 0% enrage fight can be considered the equivalent of a challenge mode fight with one of the Heart's generals. A 100% fight can be considered the equivalent of Araxxor.

Telos follows a special drop mechanic; upon obtaining loot, the player can either claim it or "chain" it (beginning a killstreak) by using the "continue challenge" option in order to increase their chances of getting better rewards in forthcoming encounters. Telos will always drop loot upon defeat. See the tables below.

Telos has three different "tiers" of rewards:

Tier

Description

Bronze

The bronze reward table is given for players who defeat Telos at 0-24% enrage. It offers the lowest value rewards and lowest chance of obtaining unique drops.

Silver

The silver reward table is given for players who defeat Telos at 25-99% enrage. It offers medium value rewards and a higher chance of obtaining unique drops.

Gold

The gold reward table is given for players who defeat Telos at 100% or greater enrage. It offers high value rewards and the highest chance of obtaining unique drops. Presumably, unique drops start following the normal drop rate.

After defeating Telos and interacting with his trove, the player can either claim the current reward(s) or continue the challenge. Further kills cannot be attempted until the player claims the rewards in the trove or continues the challenge. Rewards cannot be claimed if the player continues the challenge; it can only be collected once Telos is defeated, or the player fails in defeating him.

Claiming the current rewards in the trove will send them straight to the bank. This will end the player's killstreak and reset Telos' enrage back to 0%. This can be done any time by the player after defeating Telos (or vice versa). Soothsayer Sybil can reset Telos' enrage back to 0% if the player wishes to cancel the challenge, but doing so will forfeit all accumulated rewards and thus highly discouraged.

Continuing the challenge will cause Telos to gain anywhere from 5-20% enrage, which is added onto the next battle with him. Subsequent challenges continue to stack new enrage to the current stack, capping at a total of 4000%. Logging out does not reset the killstreak. This process can be continued as long as the player wishes, though there is a cap of 200 kills that can be "stored" in the trove; if the player attempts to defeat Telos more than 200 times in a given killstreak, the game will prevent you from fighting Telos until you claim your rewards. [3]

Important: If a player should die whilst on a killstreak at any level of enrage, they will retain a varied amount of their rewards and may reclaim them from the activated font on the initial platform. Part of the rewards will be removed as a penalty for dying. The percentage of rewards retained starts at 5% when starting a killstreak, increasing by 5% for every kill afterwards up to 75% (15 killstreak). The game calculates the rewards retained upon defeat to the nearest whole number, not by the value of the items held in the trove. For example, if the chest held 19 wine of Saradomin with a 5% retain value, nothing would be kept due to a non-whole number of 0.95. If it held 20 wines instead at the same retain value, only one wine would be recovered. The rewards must be claimed if you are defeated during a killstreak, as the game will prevent you from fighting Telos again until you do so.

The player's luck also affects the Trove's contents. As it is considered "chest" loot, players do not have to bring luck items to each kill. The following happens depending on the player's tier of luck:

Luck tier

Description

3 or lower

No change to the chest.

4

A "second" chest is generated. It can cause the following:

Small chance rewards may have quantities changed (e.g a drop of 89 rune bars can turn into 93)

Even smaller chance that a unique reward may appear that would not appear in a tier 3 or lower luck chest. If this happens, the reward that would have been given will be changed into that reward (e.g 3,000 incandescent energy turns into a reprisal codex). A 25% enrage stack is also added, which is the reason why the chest generates different rewards, so kills above 100% enrage are treated as if they were 25% higher. On kills lower than 100% enrage, this 25% stack is added after being penalized.

The drop rate of the unique items is dependent on Telos's enrage; the higher it is, the more likely a unique drop will be given. It has been stated that streaking is better for obtaining unique drops than a high enrage, low streak kill.

Killing Telos within 25-99% enrage will grant the player Silver tier loot, which has a 10 times reduced chance to access the unique drop table. If the enrage is below 25%, the player will be awarded Bronze tier loot, which has a 3 times reduced chance on top of the previous drop modifier, meaning that obtaining unique drops would be 30 times rarer than normal.

It was worked out that the equation for the unique item drop rates could be:

Where $ e $ is the enrage of Telos, $ s $ is the number of total kills done in the streak (so Streak+1 if using the Streak value in the loot interface), and $ l $ is either 25 or 0, depending on whether the chest was looted with Luck of the Dwarves worn or not. It is stated that the drop rate caps at approximately 2000% enrage and 200 streak, which results in a 1/9 drop rate for uniques. A 4000% enrage kill with no streak also yields the same result.

The validity of this formula remains unconfirmed, but it matches the known drop rates at different streaks and enrages revealed by Mod Timbo perfectly. The equation was discovered by noticing that the drop chance increases linearly at different enrages at a constant enrage. The streak's factor in the equation was deduced by assuming a similar linear increase in the drop chance, and by being then able to predict the known drop rates at different streaks.[4]

Using this equation, it appears that the best strategy for making money would be streaking from a low enrage to the highest potential enrage possible. Streaks may start at either 0% or 100%. 0% should only be used if the player can streak to very high enrage (750%+), as the rewards obtained from 0-99% are usually low in addition to the penalized drop rate compared to starting at 100% enrage.

When a unique item is rolled, the player has the chance for the following:

^Has a base drop rate of 1/1,400 (increasing to 1/700 in encounters of 100% and greater enrage) with both following a threshold of 300. It is automatically added to the player's inventory if it is received and dropped to the ground beneath them if their inventory is full.

The type and quantity of the rewards is dependent on the player's killstreak and Telos' enrage level. Enrage affects the reward obtained (such as onyxes, which are very rare on low enrage), while killstreak determines the quantity of the rolled reward.

There were global broadcasts for the first player to reach 100% enrage and every 100% increase in enrage after that. The first regular and hardcore ironman players to unlock the Warden title were also globally broadcast. [8][2]

On 11 August 2017, the player sadden became the first player to defeat Telos at 4000% enrage. Dialogue referring to this event was added to Soothsayer Sybil on 14 August 2017.

Because Telos' combat level increases with his enrage, he (as well as his three golems) would technically be the strongest monster in RuneScape when fought in an encounter of 801% or higher enrage, which would give him a combat level of 10,010, exceeding Vorago and Yakamaru.

At 4000% enrage, Telos' and his three golems' combat levels are 42,000.

Telos is also the most damaging monster in-game, as his "SO. MUCH. POWER!" attack deals 49,995 damage at 4000% enrage.

A new solo boss monster was first mentioned at RuneFest 2015. Concept art from Runefest showed a boss fight taking place underwater, however the underwater concept was later changed to the fight taking place in the Heart of Gielinor.

Upon release, there was a glitch/bug where with damage scrimshaws, it was possible for Telos to drop to 0 life points during the first three phases, "killing" him early. This would result in the player being unable to proceed further. This has since been hotfixed.

When successfully defeated by a player, the following message is displayed in the player's RuneMetrics event log: "I killed Telos, the final defender of the Heart of Gielinor." If the player defeats Telos more than once in a gameplay session, the message is changed to "I killed x Telos, the final defenders of the Heart of Gielinor".

For a few days after release, players on a killstreak would lose all of their accumulated loot if they entered the arena and left without waking Telos. This has since been hotfixed.

Unlike other bosses that have a timer to record a player's personal fastest kill, the timer for Telos only appears at kills with 100% or more enrage.

The patch notes of 18 July 2016 changed the following:

Prior to the change, a player on a killstreak lost all of their rewards if they died or left while fighting Telos. This was changed because of how harsh this mechanic was, especially for players who disconnected during a fight. A change was implemented to allow players to retain some of the rewards if they die to Telos.

The player used to have to "spin" interfaces to determine their reward and enrage gained. Since it was already pre-determined, a streamlined option was added which will give the player their rewards and how much enrage Telos gains if they choose to continue the encounter.

On 26 September 2016, Telos received a combat update which allows him to perform rock fall attacks at any enrage level if he is unable to attack the player. However, players reported multiple bugs, which were fixed on 3 October 2016.

Telos would not attempt to melee the player on phase 2.

The fonts on phase 4 were already charged. In addition, when Telos is siphoning the fonts, the game would think that Telos is unable to attack the player and would send rocks crashing down on the player's position.

On 24 October 2016, Telos received an update for his enrage mechanic. The player can now fight Telos at their highest enrage + 5%. This is to help the player reach higher enrages, as the original method to obtain higher enrages was to defeat Telos with the enrage provided, and failing the kill in that enrage would force players to start over again. In addition, phase indicators were also added on his life points interface so players could know how much damage was needed before the next phase would start.

There is an occasional glitch where upon getting close to Telos, he will attempt to wake but suddenly turn dormant again. This can be fixed by moving away before running next to him.

Although the Behind the Scenes stated that Telos would use all three styles of combat, neither Telos or any of his minions use any type of ranged attack.

In the Beasts tab, when viewing Telos' "The End" attack, it shows him using it in his phase 1-4 form, rather than the phase 5 form.

His font drain attack also uses a different animation than the one used in the fight.

^Mod Shauny. Top 10 killers per Boss. 2 Feb 2018. "Here are the top 10 kills for each Boss in RuneScape, be aware that we've not listed display names for privacy purposes however if you wish to brag about one number being yours then we won't stop you!"*

^Mod Shauny. Top 10 killers per Boss. 6 May 2018. "Here are the top 10 kills for each Boss in RuneScape, be aware that we've not listed display names for privacy purposes however if you wish to brag about one number being yours then we won't stop you!"